Public sector becoming IT savvy

The public sector seems to be becoming more IT savvy with the news of UK police getting BlackBerry smart phones, Lancashire County Council upgrading networks and NHS being asked to use more IT to cut down carbon emission. Thames Valley Police will be given 1,100 BlackBerry smartphones to remotely access Police National Computer. It will also simplify and expedite checking of vehicles. Looking up for the names of suspects and accessing numerous applications will be now possible at the click of a button.

According to Keith Gough, mobile information project manager at Thames Valley, officers will able to render improved service to local communities since they will be updated with minute-to-minute information via BlackBerry smartphones. In another move for improvement of services, the Lancashire Country Council extended its contract with network vendor to upgrade its Ethernet services and to interconnect over 50 sites for the voice and data traffic. Council’s field employees will also be equipped with mobile broadband. Dave Dickens, assistant director ICT, mentions that the corporate network provided by Thus will create a platform to take care of needs of the remote workforce.

IT professionals ask for more training

An online survey of 225 IT professionals conducted by Zoomerang on behalf of Safari Books Online reveals that inaccurate information from web sites costs time and money to IT departments. The culprit for this pathetic situation is the lack of IT management training, feel the professionals.

85 % of respondents inform that they spend more than two hours each day in surfing the web for the job specific information. They search reliable sources for product reviews, answers to trouble shooting applications, technology and project management information.

45% of respondents revealed that information collected by them after several hours of search is later found to be most unreliable and inaccurate. The survey did not probe the source of information but did ask the respondents about the criteria to decide trust worthiness of information. 32% decided on the basis of publisher, 16% on the basis of reviews by peers and 15% on periodicals of their trust.

Consequences of using inaccurate information are many time serious. 15% respondents reported failure of their IT networks. Inaccurate information resulted customer complaints to management, bugs in the software and redoing of projects.

All the problems caused increase in costs due to inordinate delays. 65 percent of respondents want their employers to provide access to accurate information pertaining to their specific roles and responsibilities. Many respondents feel that improved project management training is required to sharpen their skills.
The findings should provide an insight to the top managements that training of their professionals deserves top priority.

UK computing students are blank on security

A report by the Government funded Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network (CSKTN) points out that UK computing students get no education on software security even at the basic level. UK computing students supposed to design and develop new software applications, are not taught how to incorporate security functionality. The report is very much shocking.

This pathetic revelation came to light when CSKTN scrutinised 75 UK universities for their web material.
Bill Whyte, author of the report and himself a security  consultant was surprised to find that only 20% of UK computing graduates get just 5 hours’ of education on software security and there are many who get no education at all.

Security is one of the most important requirements of computing market. Without software security, computing markets stand exposed to threats of financial losses. It is therefore essential that large percentage of software designers and developers be   educated on security. Knowledge on software security should be made compulsory element of the software design and development curriculum.  CSKTN director Nigel Jones believes that security is not getting priority in UK’s IT software development list. This is a pathetic situation and needs serious and urgent action on the part of Government and Universities.

UK authority enhances data protection with bakbone netvault: backup

BakBone, the leading provider in the industry for data protection, has declared that Wolverhampton City Council in the UK has improved its data protection system by having 8 in 1 back up and recovery solutions with BakBone Net Vault back up system.

The local council reduced the administration and maintenance cost significantly by a big margin owing to the invention of this technology. Now the Wolverhampton City Council in UK stores up to 24TB of data.

Users are spread over different locations can benefit because of a good back up and recovery arrangements. The task to get all these done with a minimum cost was huge. Wolverhampton City Council depended on the combined work of arrays, filers and tape libraries running Fibre Channel, CIFS and iSCSI. IP asynchronous duplication of data provides the administration with improved standards of data protection in between the sites.

BakBone software is the leading international data protection provider.

Overseas opportunities causing loss of skilled IT staff for UK market

Attractive opportunities of employment in overseas IT companies are posing danger to the UK market of losing large number of skilled staff. UK companies are failing in their attempts to retain the staff for longer periods. The turn over is so rapid that the employees start to look for an overseas job within months of joining a company.

Survey report by a recruitment firm Computer People, is quite startling. Out of 4967 UK professionals it surveyed, almost 66 per cent are in the search of job opportunities outside UK.

Comparison of salary structure across the industry reveals that salary is not the main reason for migration of skilled staff. As per the report, staff with Cobol skills, earns the best payment averaging £41,870 per annum. Minimum average salary earned by Cisco skills is £32,320 per year, which is on par with many overseas companies.

The overall full-time sector average across the industry is £35,160. Only 15 % of IT staff is getting the highest pay packet in the range of £40,000 to £50,000 per year. The survey concludes that inflating the pay packets is not the right solution to tide over the problem of migration of skilled staff.

Nick Dettmar of Computer People opines that more than offering good salaries, employers should invest in developing skills and careers of their staff. Broader incentives and opportunities for skill development will retain the employees for longer duration.

“It’s easy to throw money at a problem, but firms must do more than offer good salaries. Employers shouldn’t look at their staff as just a skill set, they need to invest in their people and in developing their careers,” said Nick Dettmar, managing director of Computer People. He is of the opinion that UK firms should offer their employees broader incentives and opportunities for skill development, to retain them for longer duration.

Windows XP SP3 In Its Final Phase

The final service pack for Windows XP will be available to users by the end of April, if we are to believe a leaked Microsoft schedule. The assumed schedule for the release of XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) claims that manufacturers and volume licence customers will be able to access the upgrade on 21 April. Other XP users will get their hands on the pack on 28 April via Microsoft Update, Windows Update and the Download Center website. Anyone who fails to install the service pack will be required to do so on 10 June through automatic update.

XP SP3 is an improvement on the updates and fixes that was released by Microsoft since SP2 came out in 2004. Windows XP has been launched in 2001. It was later replaced at the end of 2006 by Windows Vista. But Vista received very poor acceptance by many users. A number of petitions are at present circulating the internet, requesting Microsoft to allow retail sales of XP even after its stated cut-off date of mid-2008.

Microsoft will permit XP to be sold on some computers but only low-cost sub-notebooks like the Asus Eee, that do not have the required processing power to deal with Vista’s requirements.

Nortel launches its new technology for better networking!

One of the leading makers of office telephone systems in North America, Nortel Networks Corp will soon announce the launch of its new technology which will enable telecom companies to boost the capacity of their networks up to four times. It will help them deal with a boom in Internet video, high-definition programming and the use of mobile video phones. It will provide offer an optical technology that would deliver speeds of 40 gigabytes per second, which, is approximately four times as much as present day’s high-end networking speeds. Additionally, this new technology will also provide with the foundation that will help boost the current high-end networking speed of 10 Gbps that supports the bandwidth of 1,000 high definition television channels to 100 Gbps, as required by growth in “bandwidth-sapping” applications.

The company also confirmed that Denmark’s TDC and Neos Networks in the United Kingdom have already purchased the new technology and trials with other companies are currently in progress around the world. Nortel is very positive and confident that with the advancement in technology, more and more devices, besides computers and mobiles phones will begin connecting to internet and that the demand for bandwidth will soar even more leading to increase in sales.

UK Tech Industry Can Play a Vital Role To Save The Planet

The UK technology sector simply has twelve years to reduce its fast growing carbon footprint in order to save the world from disastrous climate changes. The IT and consumer electronics industry need wake up and keep tabs on its CO2 emissions. It requires accelerating low carbon technological practices, based on the report done by the UK trade association. The report quotes that IT is accountable for roughly two per cent of global CO2 emissions. It warns that without timely action the emissions related to IT and to consumer electronics will increase five to six times. The extensive implementation of low carbon tech is the only way to prevent damaging temperature rise of two degrees centigrade-plus. And this should happen by 2020.

The report has identified 26 different technologies that various sectors can apply in order to reduce their carbon emissions. The report elaborates on the efficiency and standby improvements in products such as LCD and plasma flatscreens and OLEDs and FEDs. It also points that companies need to implement measures like rebuilding data centres around energy efficiency. The report provides strong support to carbon accounting as one way of enhancing demands for energy efficient products and services.

Ordnance Survey provides access of maps to developers

After a closed alpha launch on 14th December 2007, Ordnance Survey has now completed testing of its OS OpenSpace API. Now it is open for developers to mash up their own applications utilizing the UK national mapping agency’s data network as a setting. The registered users can develop applications from a nationwide view down to specific street level. They can use up to 30,000 “tiles” of geographical information and up to 1,000 place-name searches in a day. According to the government’s present goal to make public-sector information more handy, OS OpenSpace is supposed to open the entry to non-commercial experimentation with Ordnance Survey’s mapping information.

Iain Wright MP, the minister in charge for Ordnance Survey said that with the launch of OS OpenSpace, Ordnance Survey becomes the leader in providing greater admittance to public information. This launch will let others to innovate using various geographic information with confidence that the data accessible to them is updated.

With the help of OS OpenSpace, Web developers can add lines, markers and polygons on top of Ordnance Survey mapping. They have the option of searching for names of places with a gazetteer-style geographical dictionary. They can also display various other location data, like the whereabouts of cafes, pubs, and other public utility services.
 

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